The present invention relates to a facsimile apparatus and, more particularly, to a flat, compact, low-profile facsimile apparatus.
A compact facsimile apparatus has been conventionally proposed. The arrangement of the recording and originall reading sections of such a facsimile apparatus will be briefly described below with reference to FIG. 11.
FIG. 11 is a cross-sectional view of the conventional facsimile apparatus, which is considered to have the most compact, flattest structure at present. Referring to FIG. 11, a first opening portion 203 is formed in the upper surface of a housing cover 200, which also serves as a housing, at a position near an edge portion thereof. A second opening portion 204 is formed in the upper surface of the housing cover 200 at a backward position (on the rear surface side) with respect to the first opening portion 203. In addition, a discharge port 205 is formed in the front surface of the housing cover 200.
In the above arrangement, an original G is inserted, with its image surface facing down, through the first opening portion 203. The inserted original G is clamped between a contact line image sensor 12 and a first biasing roller 13 which is pivoted in a biased state with respect to the contact line image sensor 12. The original G is then conveyed and discharged from the discharge port 205.
On the inner surface of the upper wall of the housing cover 200, as shown in FIG. 11, a roll-like recording paper KR, which is a roll of thermal recording paper, is held to be movable in a direction of an arrow and replaceable. The color development surface of roll paper K2 is set to oppose the recording portion of a line thermal head 14 constituting the recording section. At the same time, the roll paper K2 is clamped between the line thermal head 14 and a second biasing roller 15 which is pivoted in a biased state with respect to the line thermal head 14, and is discharged outside through the second opening portion 204 after a recording operation.
With the above-described arrangement, the reading portion and the recording portion are prevented from overlapping each other in the direction of height, thereby reducing the height of the housing cover 200.
In the above-described facsimile apparatus, however, in order to reduce the height of the housing, roll-like recording paper (KR) is disposed between the reading and recording sections. As a result, the housing requires at least a space, as an extra depth, for storing the roll-like recording paper (KR). Therefore, a further reduction in the depth of the housing cannot be achieved.
In addition, since the above facsimile apparatus is designed to use only roll-like recording paper (KR), a so-called cut sheet consisting of thermal recording paper, e.g., an A4 size sheet, cannot be set in the recording section. More specifically, in order to set such a cut sheet in the recording section, a cumbersome operation is required. For example, a cut sheet may be set after roll-like recording paper is removed. Therefore, it is practically impossible to set a cut sheet in the recording section. If an opening portion specially designed for the insertion of a cut sheet is to be formed, for example, near the above-mentioned first opening portion, the strength of a bar-like partition portion formed between the first opening portion and the opening portion having a longitudinal size larger than at least the width of an A4 size sheet cannot be guaranteed. In practice, therefore, setting of a cut sheet cannot be performed.
Furthermore, according to the above facsimile apparatus, since driving motors are respectively arranged for the first and second biasing rollers, the power consumption during a driving operation of each roller is large, and the number of components is undesirably increased.